


Turn of the Wheel

by Shadow_Belle



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, stages of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-07
Updated: 2011-11-06
Packaged: 2017-10-25 19:11:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/273764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Belle/pseuds/Shadow_Belle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione has trouble dealing with Molly’s death. She’s always been the strong one, the practical one. But when she realizes that everything can change in an instant, she’s not too sure about her place in the world or the choices that she’s made.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Attica](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Attica).



Title: Turn of the Wheel  
Written For: Attica  
Rating: R  
Pairing: mention of Harry/Hermione, Draco/Hermione  
Warnings: Character Death  
Disclaimer: I disclaim.  
Summary: Hermione has trouble dealing with Molly’s death. She’s always been the strong one, the practical one. But when she realizes that everything can change in an instant, she’s not too sure about her place in the world or the choices that she’s made.  
A/N: Some of the things that Hermione goes through in this are more common that what is talked about when dealing with grief and life-changing trauma. And Attica, this was truly a challenge in every sense of the word. So, I really hope you like it. *crosses fingers* And of course, there are thank-yous to involved parties…

 

Pen name and Group Username: attica/attica  
Ships: Draco/Hermione, Harry/Hermione  
Reading Ratings: PG-13. R  
What do you want in your fic?: Draco and Hermione not falling in love too easily, snarky!Pansy, the death of Molly Weasley, her funeral, the trio packing up her things, Hermione having sympathy sex w/ Ron (but that's it).  
One specific All Hallow's Eve item that MUST be included!: high-lighter  
What don’t you want in your fic? fluff, sappiness.

 

Lips that had kissed countless scrapes and sang away sorrows; they were thin and fragile. A soft shell pink that still seemed wrong against ashen features, though it was that pale perfect marble that could only be achieved after death’s kiss on a warm brow. Those tiny lines around her eyes had relaxed, but the ones around her mouth were more prominent. They were a tattoo of her strength, showing themselves when determination set her mouth in a grim challenge. Bright red hair was fanned out around her shoulders, only a bit of silver showing its way through the thick mass.

Molly’s hands were raw, red chapped. They were marked with the wounds of a mother who had worked her fingers to the bone to care for the family that she loved. Ginny had linked them ever so properly beneath her bosom and wrapped her wrists and knuckles with a wilting daisy chain, meticulously crafted by hands that were a mother’s now, too. Hands that would do the same things that Molly’s had, though never in same way. That was the one thing that they would all remember, those gentle hands with their quiet and delicate strength.

Hermione looked at Molly’s face again. She was beautiful, even with all the harshness of death in that predawn stillness. Love had a way of softening things, of shining a different kind of light. A warm pool of forgiving virtue and memory.

But Hermione didn’t imagine that there was much that needed forgiving with this woman. She smoothed a stray curl from the cool forehead and tucked it behind Molly’s ear.

Tears were threatening to choke her; they were so thick and bitter.

Things like this, they weren’t supposed to happen. Not now. So many had lost so much and it was supposed to be a time for rejoicing, for healing. They’d had enough of loss and death.

Apparently, it hadn’t had enough of them.

Her gaze was drawn to the small form that was curled in the crook of Molly’s arm against her breast. She didn’t want to look, couldn’t bear to see the stillness there. The silence that would never be a laugh, the drawn bow of a mouth that would never be a smile. The eyes that never had a chance to open and gaze in wide wonder at the world, fingers that would never grasp for that wonder…

Hermione bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood, the coppery tang keeping her sane somehow.

She remembered when Molly had told them that she was pregnant again. She’d been cheerfully handing out slices of her famous sweet potato pie when she’d said very casually, “I’m pregnant.” Arthur had been stricken, but the glow in Molly’s face, the joy in her eyes… He hadn’t said what they all knew.

Molly was too old to go through that again. But there had been smiles and hugs, tears of happiness… Because that was all she would allow.

Cerebral Aneurysm. The strain of labor…

She’d been dead before she could push the baby from her body. Which was a blessing because the sweet little face had been blue, almost purple. The cord wrapped around her tiny neck.

A grand feast had been laid before Death that day; a banquet of sorrow. And Hermione feared there would be plenty on his table for quite some time.

Arthur was like a zombie, he’d locked himself in his study with nothing but a bottle of Fire Whiskey. He wouldn’t look at either of them. Perhaps he thought that if he didn’t acknowledge it, that it hadn’t happened.

And Ginny was the only one who seemed to understand, the only one who asked after him. The boys seemed to blame him, because if he hadn’t touched their sainted mother, she would still be here. There would still be the family dinners on Sunday, the worried floos asking if they were eating enough… Molly was the silken knot that bound them all together.

Now that she was gone, the stars had all blinked out and no matter how hard any of them looked, they couldn’t seem to find the light.

Including Hermione.

She laid her head on the still chest, seeking some remnant of the woman who’d been there, some trace of the warmth that had come so easily and missing those arms that always had a place for her.

Hermione pressed her lips to the chilly surface of Molly’s cheek and a choked sob escaped her.

It wasn’t right. She wasn’t supposed to be gone.

Tears were streaking down her face unchecked as she sobbed for what was and what could never be. They burned like fire, marked her like acid.

And they were bitter, sour on her tongue as they fell.

Strong arms were suddenly around her, they were warm and safe. All of the things that she never thought that she would feel again.

She allowed those arms to pull her into an embrace and let her grief take her.

Familiar hands slid up and down her back. “Can’t bear your tears, Mione.”

Ron’s warmth enveloped her, saved her.

Hermione knew this was wrong, she wasn’t supposed to be the one who was broken here. He’d lost his mother. She should have had a place in her arms for him and it should be her hands soothing him, her voice quiet in his ear assuring him that everything would be okay. But she just didn’t understand how it would ever be okay again.

Death, yes there had been much of that during the war. But it was accepted. It was a risk they all took. But this, it was so random… So pointless.

And here he was, so strong, so sure. There was a promise in that embrace. He would care for her, defend her against the dark… Ron, always Ron. So steadfast. So brave. He feared the dark like anyone else, but that never stopped him from standing strong against it.

Hermione could wrap herself in him and he would let her. He would hide her from the ugly things, the pain.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Though she wasn’t exactly sure what she was apologizing for. For his loss, his sorrow, her own weakness… The fact that she knew what he wanted, that she would give it to him, let him think that there could be something between them because this was what she needed.

She hated herself in that moment, but that didn’t stop her from brushing her lips across his throat, from digging her fingers into his shoulders, from arching into him when those comforting touches became something more.

He pulled away then, looking for something in her eyes. If he looked too hard, the moment would be broken, shattered like she was. He would see the truth there, that she didn’t love him. That she never would.

This was a moment set away from all moments, an individual granule in the hourglass suspended between here and there. It was out of context and out of design. There would never be another one like it, it was unique. Alone.

It hung, shiny and glittering like those stars in the sky that they couldn’t seem to find.

But if they looked too close, it would be nothing but Fool’s Gold.

He took her hand and led her from the room where his mother lay composed in the absolute of death. Led her through the hallways and stairs that would never be the same, led her to the quiet of a room where he’d spent his childhood. A place where checked flannel sheets still covered the bed, sheets that Molly’s own hands had tucked beneath the mattress.

His mouth was hot and insistent on hers and it was enough. Enough to make her forget that for him, this was about love. That it should have been about something more for her, too. Maybe not love, but something that was worth breaking his heart for.

Ron tried to kiss her breasts, her stomach, wanted to slip his fingers between her thighs. He wanted to give her pleasure. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She just needed that contact, the feeling of him inside her.

And if she was honest with herself, she wouldn’t feel so dirty if she just let him rut on her. Because then they would be using each other.

But every touch from him was a tribute, damn him.

She stopped his hands and pulled his mouth back up to hers.

“I want it to be good for you, Hermione.” His breathing was ragged, harsh- his control hanging by a thread.

She put her hand on his shoulder. This was it. She could stop now. She could… “It will be.”

He thrust inside her warmth, the fluid coming to lube his way more out of mechanics than desire.

Hermione held onto him, waiting for it to be over. It wasn’t what she thought it would be like. And not that his body wasn’t pleasing, or that he was untried. It was just…

It was empty. It was nothing.

And she shouldn’t have traded that big pile of nothing for her friendship with this man. She loved him, she did. Just not the way that he loved her.

She made soft sounds in his ear, whispers of pleasure so that he would think that it had been good for her. The tears were still burning in her eyes, the regret screaming at her to stop, but she had to finish what she’d started.

Ron spilled into her, taking her mouth as he did. She returned his kiss with a wild abandon, but it wasn’t lust.

Hermione was trying to tell him how sorry she was, she was trying to give him something to think back on, something that he would know was real.

He rolled off of her, trying to tuck her in the crook of his arm as he went.

She pursed her lips and pulled away. “I have to go.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Everything.

“I don’t understand.” Ron waited with what seemed like expectation.

“Everything’s fine.” Liar. “I just have to get ready if I want to be presentable tonight. I wasn’t expecting,” she made hapless gestures with her hands, “this.”

“Neither was I.” His stare was hard for a moment. “It’s okay, you know.”

If she had a rock, she would have crawled under it. “What do you mean?”

“This.” He got up from the bed and slipped his clothes back on. “It doesn’t have to be anything you don’t want it to be.”

“I don’t know what I want right now. I’m sorry.”

Hermione felt like the lowest piece of offal. He should be saying these things to her. It was his mother that was cold and still. His mother that they would be sending to the flames.

“I didn’t ask you for anything more.”

“But you did. With the way you touched me…”

“Would you rather I’d bent you over the chair and taken you like a whore?”

Yes, yes! She wanted to scream it at him. “Ron,”

“Just go.”

“I’m,” she began.

“Don’t say it. Don’t say that,”

He was surprisingly intuitive. He seemed to know what she wanted, what she needed. Even what she was going to say. He knew her so well. And that was when she realized that she didn’t know him at all. Or herself. There had been so many things that she’d be sure of. They’d been immutable stone.

Then everything had changed.

She went to him and tried to wrap her arms around him.

“You couldn’t stand for me to touch you a moment ago, ‘Mione. You said that you needed to go. So go.”

And there was no accusation in his voice, no bitterness. It might have been easier if there had been.

“I’ll be back tonight. I’ll be here.”

“I know you will.” He turned his back on her then and that was her cue to leave.


	2. Rituals

The night air was a razor slicing into brittle bones. Hermione wondered if she’d ever be able to straighten out her aching fingers. They’d frozen into angry claws, gripped around a sputtering torch.

She kept checking the bundle to make sure that the tar hadn’t dripped down onto her fingers. The flames could spread so easily.

Hermione was thankful that they hadn’t asked to her to speak. She didn’t have any words. None that were sufficient, anyway. How could they be? They were simple sounds made by primitive organs, nothing but the process of air being pushed past flesh. Flesh that could decay and rot. Flesh that became ash.

How could flesh comprehend the ethereal, the intangible?

She realized suddenly that the harps and pipes had gone silent. They were all waiting for her to lay her torch beneath the winter grasses and heather. To light the fire that would wrap warm arms around cold flesh and take her away as if she’d never been.

Hermione was slow and meticulous, draping the fire like ornamental lace along the pyre.

There was a clear soprano that sounded like she’d come down from on high, but it was one of the professional mourners with her wand to her throat. Her voice was pure and true.

 _O Bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see  
Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree  
For it stood on your shore for many's the long day  
Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away_

Harry was so sure and quick with his movements, flames crackling- grasping with blue-orange fingers.

The moon smiled down on her daughters, the ones that were soon to come to the Mother’s breast, with a gentle silvery light.

 _O Bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand  
And the more I think on you the more I think long  
If I had you now as I had once before_

Nothing would ever be as it had once before. And never would Molly Weasley shine where she’d stood. Because she was gone.

 _All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep  
Saying "where will we shelter or where will we sleep?"  
For the Oak and the Ash they are all cutten down  
And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground._

Those words reverberated in her ears, digging into her soft parts. _If I had you now as I had once before,_

If they could only have each other as they had once before, before the war, before death knew them by name.

Hermione was choking on her own bitterness.

It was Arthur’s wand that cast the final spell that caused the flames to roar to the sky- that fed them with the meat of mortality. But he didn’t stay to watch. He was gone into the darkness, silent and alone with his grief.

The mourners would be making their way back to the Burrow soon. She wondered briefly if Arthur would be there. But Hermione didn’t think that he’d be able to stomach all of the well-meaning words and moon-faced sorrow.

She didn’t want to go back herself. She didn’t want to face Ron or Bill, Charlie… Hermione couldn’t bear it. She knew it was selfish, knew that she should put her own feelings aside, but she just didn’t think that she could do it.

Hermione sank against a tree, sucking in the crisp air, letting it fill her lungs, holding it until they burned, then exhaling in a rush.

Gryffindor courage, bah. It had been easier when she was high on teen angst. The fact that the world as they knew it could end was just as intense as when Ginny and Dean broke up. Everything was life and death then.

“Granger.” A voice interrupted from the shadows. “This is fortuitous.”

Hermione didn’t bother to turn her head. She knew who it was.

“What do you want, Malfoy?”

“Directions to the Burrow, actually. Never been there, you see.”

Another voice. Pansy. “Can you believe it?”

“Draco Malfoy at the Burrow? No. Not really.” Hermione said as she snapped a twig and rolled it between her fingers.

“No,” Pansy said, her tone faux hushed. “A man that will ask for directions.”

“That is interesting.” Her voice was flat. She really didn’t give a shite.

“Granger. Directions, yeah?” Draco prodded.

Hermione found Pansy’s hands on her forearms pulling her up.

“You should just come with us. C’mon girl,” Pansy was dragging her to the enchanted car.

Hermione wanted to protest, but only for a moment. It really didn’t seem like there was much point and she just didn’t have the energy to fight with them. And Hermione, having worked with Pansy at the Ministry, had discovered she wasn’t such a bad lot.

The ride was more than uncomfortable. She was pressed between Pansy and Draco. She felt like she had to keep her back stiff so that no part of her touched him.

But he was eased back in the seat as if he hadn’t a care in the world. She wondered if it was the money that did that, that made it so you just didn’t care.

Sometimes, she wished she was rich and cold. That she didn’t care so damn much about everything.

They rounded a particularly crooked corner and Hermione was thrust against Draco.

She fought to right herself and put as much distance between them as possible. What Hermione didn’t expect was his reaction.

“Do you find something about me offensive, Granger?”

Not offensive, but for a moment, at that contact, she knew that his arms could block out the dark. Because he would be the one who could fill her up, who could give her what she wanted. He could make her feel alive. And there would be no pretense of feelings, no calf-eyed glances or breathless expressions of forever.

Because nothing was forever. Forever was a lie. Forever was broken.

“I would never presume to lay my hands on you, Malfoy.” she snapped.

“I see. And what if I,” he paused as if considering. “Were to lay my hands on you?”

She pulled out her wand.

But he didn’t so much as blink in acknowledgement. Not that he would.

“Your grief becomes you.” He smirked.

“How do I put up with you, Draco?” Pansy cooed, though she sounded just a bit insincere.

“I wouldn’t.” Hermione said.

“He has a big cock, so it’s not always a trial.” Pansy grinned and then leaned back to look out of the window again. “At least that’s what he pays me to say.”

“Nice, Pansy.” Draco rolled his eyes.

“Why are you two even here?” Hermione asked. She was fairly sure that Pansy wasn’t there for malicious reasons, but Malfoy, she just didn’t know. But she wouldn’t let him damage the already splintered family.

She’d not kept up with him after the war, but he worked for the Ministry as well. Had some sort of war hero status, too. Or so she’d heard.

“You don’t know? I thought you knew everything.” Draco smirked again. “I work for Arthur.”

“And you are always socially correct, I see.” Hermione was snide.

“Molly was a good woman. I would be here regardless.”

“His mother’s second cousin, twice removed, or some rot.” Pansy rolled her eyes.

Hermione turned away, her skin still burning from the contact with Draco. There she was, lusting after Draco Malfoy when her lips were still swollen from Ron’s kiss. She felt like such a whore. But all she wanted was a port in the storm, an anchor against the impending dark. Was it so wrong for her to need something?


	3. Things

It wasn’t right. They weren’t supposed to be here, in her things. Hermione traced a finger over the worn Weasley sweater, the one with the “M” on it. It was finely crafted, each loop of the yarn had been carefully and delicately made with a loving hand.

She held it to her chest and inhaled the scent of vanilla and sugar cookies. Everything that Molly had touched seemed to smell like that.

It made her think of a home that she would never have. Made her want things, like children and family. But it made her hate them too. How could she bring a baby into the world, look into its innocence, knowing that someday, he or she would have to go through her things and decide what marked her time on this earth?

They were only things, after all. And after she was dead, they would be special to no one. They would be kept out of a sense of duty, eternal sadness ringing them with some gravity of loss.

Hermione understood why the Egyptians buried these things with the dead.

She held the sweater to her a moment longer before putting it in the box.

“Hermione?” Ron was standing in the doorway looking tortured.

“I thought I could do this…”

“Arthur hasn’t been home since last night, has he?”

Ron could only nod, the lump in his throat practically visible.

“She wouldn’t want it this way. You know that. Go find him.”

“I love you, Hermione.”

“I know.” She kept folding, she didn’t look up to meet his eyes. Hermione didn’t want to see whatever was there. His sorrow, his need. It was just too much.

Harry emerged from the stack of boxes in the corner. “I have to ask. I was going to stay out of it, but I need to know.”

“What do you think you need to know?” she snarled.

“About the stick up your arse. Look, we’re all hurting, but that doesn’t mean you have a free pass to be a bitch.”

“Oh, I’m a bitch? Why? Because I don’t love you anymore?”

“Why is it always back to that?”

“No, but Ron says he loves me and you have to come charging over her like some bull with a prod to his sac demanding some sort of explanation.”

“I didn’t say shite about Ron’s little confession. It’s no surprise to me. What does surprise me is that he told you. What happened?”

“Play white knight somewhere else.” Hermione couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. She clamped a hand over her mouth and looked at the floor. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m just not dealing with this very well.”

“None of us are, Hermione.” His eyes softened from coolly appraising to the friend that she knew.

She stood and went to him, sliding into an easy embrace.

“I’m so empty.” He smelled so good, so familiar and it was so easy to melt against him. “I just… there’s a space inside me and I don’t know…” She couldn’t say anymore.

Hermione just wanted someone to take care of her. She was tired of bearing the weight of the world. Were Harry’s shoulders broad enough? They had been. Once upon a time.

She tilted her mouth up to his, full of expectation. Expectation that maybe it was his touch that was the Holy Grail, that thing that would end this pain. And when he didn’t take the opportunity, she wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down to her.

“Please,” she whispered against his mouth.

She knew him. She knew his touch, his mouth. She knew the way that his body fit against hers and the way his muscles bunched when she dug her nails into his shoulders. She knew what he tasted like. But what she didn’t know, was this man who was still under her caress.

“Looks like you need me to play white knight after all.” Harry said evenly when he broke away from her.

“And why not?”

“Because you just said it. You don’t love me anymore.” He was gentle as he tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

“Why does it always have to be about love? Why can’t it be sensation for the sake of sensation? It’s over so soon.”

“Hermione, this is dangerous behavior.”

She laughed bitterly. “Fighting a war wasn’t dangerous behavior, but wanting to be with someone in a place out of time, to share that pleasure, that’s wrong? That’s dangerous?”

“I don’t think that it would be pleasure for you, would it? It’s not going to fill that emptiness. Nothing will. Maybe time.”

“If you’re not going to do this for me, this one thing, the only thing I’ve ever really asked of you, I’ll find someone who will.”

He grabbed her arm. “What about Molly’s things? You promised Ron…”

“The whole sodding world does not hang on his needs.”

“No. It hangs on you.”

“Goddamn you.” She narrowed her eyes, and with several flicks of her wrist, everything had been packed neatly into boxes and they stacked themselves against the far wall.

“What happened to packing her things with love?”

Hermione didn’t bother to answer him, just stormed out the door.

There was nothing wrong with her! They were the ones walking around with empty holes, trying to fill them with false feelings and…

No, she wasn’t in the wrong.

Hermione was never wrong.

She couldn’t start doubting herself, not now. Because if she did, then she would have to question all of her choices. Life and death choices.

 

Hermione felt like her whole world had fallen apart.

No, Molly hadn’t been _her_ mother. But now it seemed that she had been a lynch pin for this whole world that she’d created her for herself. A cornerstone of morality and mores that were ash…

The wind was cold and biting, and it was exactly what she was looking for. It burned through her, the frigidity like fire, but it left numbness in its wake. And that’s what she wanted, what she needed. She needed to be scalded, a cauterization of that emptiness that kept spilling her insides out for everyone to see.

Draco Malfoy had that arctic fire; he had that frozen peace in his fingers. And he was above playing the martyr.


	4. Deeds

She was standing outside his door, her hand poised above the knocker. Anticipation coiled in her stomach, but something wouldn’t let her knock on that door.

Too many years of being _The Filthy Mudblood_ perhaps.

He had something that she needed. Malfoy was bound to respect that, that she’d come here just to take what she wanted.

Though she was sure that many a woman had knocked on his door looking for what he had to offer. But none would be the novelty that she was. Gryffindor Princess, one of the Golden Trio. The one woman that no one would have expected. Least of all, Hermione.

The door slid open with the man himself standing in the entryway.

“I got tired of waiting for you to knock. Do come in.” Draco strode purposefully away from the entryway.

“Don’t you want to why I’m here?”

“I know what you’re here for. The bedroom,” he pointed to a room that should have been a study. “Is there.”

Hermione felt her cheeks flush. And the old Hermione, she would have been embarrassed. Indignant, even.

“At least, the bedroom I use for this kind of company.”

But this was the new Hermione. This one was going to go for what she wanted. And what she wanted, what she needed, that didn’t change just because he’d anticipated her.

“Okay,” she managed in a clear voice.

She followed to where he pointed. Hermione didn’t look around. It didn’t matter what the room looked like. It didn’t matter if the bed was stuffed with feathers or hay. It could have been a two-bit inn or the Taj Mahal. All that mattered was him, inside of her.

She began to strip off her clothes, mechanically. She folded them neatly and left them next to the bed. She didn’t bother to slide demurely under the covers, nor did she splay herself like a wanton creature for his pleasure.

Hermione just laid down.

“I’m not going to ask you any of that drivel about being sure. You’re a big girl.” Draco said as he closed the door behind him. “But I will tell you, in case it’s not clear, this is just a shag.”

“Right.” A little shiver ran up her arms.

Hermione almost panicked. She could still change her mind, she could still… She could still go home feeling empty is what she could do. No, this would happen. She nodded, as though reassuring him, but what she was really doing was reassuring herself.

“I’m going to use you, Hermione. I’m going to fuck you and you, my dear, are going to love it.”

“Then fuck me and stop talking about it.”

His eyes glittered at the challenge.

There was no gentleness in his touch, no lingering worship or woeful sighs about her perfection. She could have been a goddess from above, but to Draco, this was just mechanics. He could come inside of her no matter what her face looked like. No matter if her breasts were full or small, her waist thick or trim… He could close his eyes, and she could be anyone.

When he entered her, for a moment, the darkness was gone. That emptiness was full and that nothing was a molten core of sensation.

Though it was over all too soon. He came and rolled off of her to lie flat on his back and catch his breath.

Again, she was faced with a choice. New Hermione, or old Hermione?

“I didn’t get off.”

“And?”

“And aren’t you supposed to give a shite?” She tried not to sound incredulous.

“You wanted my cock. I gave it to you. I have nothing vested in your pleasure.”

She was about to say that she wouldn’t be back. But that wouldn’t matter to him. There would just be another to take her place.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t. But if you come back, maybe you will. That’s up to you.”


	5. Beginnings

She found herself at his door the next day. Again, with her hand in the air, poised and ready to knock, but her muscles refusing to move.

The door opened as it had before.

“When are you going to get the sac to knock, Granger?” He leaned against the door this time. “You want I should sneak you in through the back door, too?”

“Are you going to let me in?”

“And why are you here?”

“The same reason I was here yesterday.”

“That was you yesterday, wasn’t it?” Draco seemed to consider.

“You know very well it was me.” She pushed past him and made her way to that room.

“If I didn’t make you come, why did you come back?”

“Because what you can give me is more important than that.” She didn’t bother to lie.

“What if I did make you come? Would you fall in love? Would you make calf-eyes and mope about with girlish sighs?”

“I just want to feel…”

“How cliché.” He smirked.

“Look, if you don’t want to fuck me…”

“Such a dirty mouth.”

He grabbed her hair and forced her head back as his eyes raked over her with a clinical intensity. For a moment, she thought that he was going to find her lacking. And what was worse, she didn’t care.

“I have something for you.” He released her.

“Oh?”

He handed her a yellow highlighter. The writing had been worn off the cylinder, it was obviously something that had been well-used. But she couldn’t imagine him ever lowering himself to use a muggle study tool.

“What is this?”

“Yours.”

She flashed back to that first humiliating day when she’d pulled out that highlighter in Potions to annotate her notes. The one spell that Hermione Granger hadn’t known on the first day of class…

Hermione had been sure that she’d thrown it out…

Draco removed her clothes for her this time. There was still no gentleness. No tenderness. But there was something else. And she kept her eyes on that highlighter through the whole encounter.

He was telling her not to throw herself away just because she was in unknown territory. He was telling her not to lose who she was in this new world, this new self.

Maybe.

Or maybe he was just a cryptic bastard that liked having power over her; that wanted to keep her guessing.

Maybe.

She would find out when she came back tomorrow.

~End


End file.
